


Trouble In Twos

by tielan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe, Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship, Daddy Issues, Fluff, Gen, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 06:21:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5857474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a kid sitting on the stairs of the DC brownstone when Tony rocks up. Maybe six or seven, in a pink Rainbow Brite tee-shirt, clutching a Cabbage Patch Doll under one arm. But her expression is decades older – an  old lady staring at him out of a little girl’s eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trouble In Twos

There’s a kid sitting on the stairs when Tony rocks up. Maybe six or seven, in a pink Rainbow Brite tee-shirt, clutching a Cabbage Patch Doll under one arm. But her expression is decades older – an  old lady staring at him out of a little girl’s eyes.

Tony isn’t sure what to think as he pauses at the bottom of the stairs up to the DC brownstone. However, judging from the expression on that round, childish face, she’s made up her mind about him already.

“You’re Tony,” she says. “Peggy said you were coming.”

“Yeah, I’m Tony. And you’re Maria. Peggy said,” he adds when the big eyes narrow.

She tilts her head, consiering him, “Angie says you’re trouble on two legs; too smart for your own good.”

He snorts. Yep, Angie wouldn’t have spared the gossip, even around this kid. “Angie should know – she was several kinds of trouble herself when she was my age, so my dad says. But I’ve been sent here to keep  _out_ of trouble.”

“Really?”

“Yep.” Tony crouches down opposite the girl and grins. “Guess they didn’t count on me meeting you, though.”

She’s smart enough to realise what he means. “I’m not trouble! Not here.”

“Oh, yeah? So where _are_ you trouble, kid?” Too late, Tony realises the question is loaded – and no more welcome to her than it would be to him. “Sorry,” he says as her face freezes. “You don’t have to answer that.”

She scuffs at the step with a sparkly-laced high-top – the kind that all the kids want and costs heaven and earth to buy. “My dad used to say I was a little bitch, good for nothing, and I’d better shut my crying or feel his hand.”

Tony tenses, his hands curling into fists. The words are different, but he recognises the tone. Not that Howard has ever lifted a hand to him or called him worthless. But the impatience, the dismissal? That he gets, all the time. Isn’t that why he’s here? _I’m sending you to Peg. She’ll know what to do with you. She always did._

“Your dad sounds like an asshole.”

She shrugs. “That’s what Angie says.”

Tony has a feeling he’s going to get a lot of _what Angie_ _says_ in the next couple of weeks. Not that he minds. Peggy and Angie are okay, even if they don’t take his shit. In fact, that’s the charm of them – that they draw the lines and if he crosses them... Well, Peggy gets fucking _terrifying_ when she gets really angry.

“Are you staying the summer?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Why?”

He smirks, remembering the mad scramble from Elysia’s bed out the window into the garden, and trying to rescue his underpants where they got stuck halfway up a palm tree. “I got too hot for L.A. to handle.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Maybe it means I had the cops after me when I left.”

The big blue eyes aren’t convinced. “If you had the cops after you, Peggy would just hand you in.”

Tony grins. She may be young, but she’s not a sucker. “Sounds like you have the aunts all worked out already.”

The door behind them opens. “I see you’ve turned up, Bad Penny.”

“Angie,” he climbs to his feet and busses her on the cheek, daring to catch her and dip her. Behind him, he hears Maria giggle. “Might I remind you that I’m not a penny anymore, I’m the whole shiny silver dollar?”

“And more trouble than ever,” says Peggy, folding her arms over her chest. “So I hear.”

“Maybe you should get your hearing checked. You are, what? Sixty? Seventy?”

“Eighty-three and three-quarters. And not a day less.” Peggy sighs as she regards him. “Come in, Tony. I’m going to make tea, you’re going to drink it without making faces, and we’re going to have cookies that Angie and Maria made yesterday. Maria? Cookies?”

“Cookies!” Okay, so, she’s still enough of a kid to bounce as she heads to the kitchen in the back of the brownstone.

Tony watches her go with some bemusement. “What’s with the kindergarten?”

Peggy’s expression is droll. “It’s a long story.”

“Lucky I’m here for two weeks, then.” Tony says. “You’ll have all the time to tell me.” He makes to head upstairs to his usual room, then pauses. “I’m not sharing with her am I?”

“Please.” Peggy pauses and her smile takes on a malicious edge. “You’re sleeping in the library.”

The library. Where the couch is uncomfortable as hell, and the room smells like the weight of ages bearing down on him. “Ah, shit.”

“Language, Tony.”

“Yeah,” he says, rolling his eyes. “I know.”


End file.
